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Congressional Record
United States of America
PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE
85th CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION
Vol. 104
No. 11
WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1958
Senate
OUR CURRENT CRISIS—AND THE
NEED FOR EDUCATION
Mr. FULBRIGHT obtained the floor.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, will
the Senator from Arkansas yield, so that
I may suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I shall be glad to
yield.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Then, Mr. President,
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The
clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call
the roll.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, I
ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. Mr. President—
If we could first know where we are, and
whither we are tending, we could better judge
what to do and how to do it.
When Abraham Lincoln spoke those
words in his house-divided speech, a
century ago, the Nation was fast drifting
toward the abyss of a tragic and
disastrous war. Lincoln sensed that a policy
of Presidential firmness and candor
might foster a national self-awareness—
the indispensable preliminary to any
"saving act of Government. But,
President James Buchanan, a tired and
amiable man with tired policies, continued to
spread the contagion of his own
confusion over the land.
Today, what was true in 1858 is again
true, but on a vastly larger scale, and in
a vastly more menacing form.
The then issue of slavery has changed
into the global conflict of cold war: A war
in which military strength, or weakness,
is a consequence rather than a cause of
how things stand on the economic,
political, educational, and cultural sectors of
the battlefront. Meanwhile, one
unnerving similarity to the America of a
century ago remains in being: It is that
the peril of the Nation increases daily
because of the way the incumbent
administration has dulled, and continues to dull,
the Nation's awareness of the danger it
faces—the danger that is posed by two
leading questions:
How strong is the Soviet Union today?
How strong is it likely to be tomorrow?
When Sputniks I and II rang out with
alarming answers to these two questions,
the national will of America was poised
to rally around the Presidency. Indeed,
that is the traditional American reaction
to a national emergency—as can be
recalled from personal experience when
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and
when the Communists attacked Korea.
In 1941, and again in 1950, the American
people expected the President of the hour
to proclaim the formidable truths of
what the Nation faced, however unpleasant.
He was expected to frame, to win
approval for, and to execute the
measures for overcoming the emergency.
And Presidents Roosevelt and Truman,
each in his own way, did just that.
No less was expected of the Eisenhower
administration—if the emergency
implications in Russia's scientific
achievements were to be met and mastered.
Yet months dropped-away, and what we
received instead was the same bland diet
of sugar-coated half-truths that has
made us fat and immobile in the past 5 years; 5
years when we should have been
muscular, resilient, and ever on the move
scouting the terrain ahead.
In the passing months, if there was
any informed public discussion on the
highest matters of state since the first
earth satellite was launched, no thanks
were due to administration sources.
They were due, rather, to the aroused
energy of individual Members of the
Congress or of private persons. The highest
officials of the administration, for their
part, continued in their old ways.
They made their own inner councils
the judge, the jury, and the repository of
the records of their own actions, never
taking the people into their full
confidence. If they asked for support for
this or that measure, they withheld a
disclosure of the facts material to an
informed public discussion of the merits
of the proposal, or they so distorted the
meaning of the facts as to make them a
caricature of the realities they are meant
to stand for.
As an example of this, the Gaither
report, developed for the express purpose of
evaluating our strength relative to that
of the Soviet Union, was suppressed on
the ground that its unpleasant truths
might cause the people to panic. But in
the next breath, Mr. Hagerty, the
President's press secretary assured the Nation
that the report does not say that the
United States is weak now. If so, we
are left to conclude that the report was
not released because the Nation might
panic from joy over the evidence of our
strength. What a fantastic, dreamlike
performance it has been.
Nor has the case changed very much
for the better since the President's state
of the Union message was delivered.
The message, to begin with, is merely
a printed catalog of good intentions.
It is not the specifics of any action
program. The experiences of the past 5
years should teach us by now that we
would be well advised to withhold any
hosannas about a proposed program
until we see it in concrete form, and until
we see whether the administration is
willing to go the limit in fighting for
its adoption. For the evidence of the
past is that this administration has a
chronic habit of not following through.
Anyway, from what administration
sources have already put out about the
details of their space-age program, it
is, at bottom, a program calling for a
minimal instead of a maximum effort
on the part of the United States. For the
ruling principle to which it is tailored—
as administration sources have made
clear in conferences with congressional
leaders—is this: That the Soviet
Union—our challenger—is a warped
society, wracked by internal strains, and
fated for an early and inglorious
collapse. In the circumstances, all we have
to do is the very little that is required
to keep our own motors idling until the
inevitable crackup occurs to the Soviet
Union.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the
Senator yield?
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield to the
Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. LONG. As a matter of fact, is it
not true that from time to time some
of us have been advised by administration
sources, particularly by the Secretary
of State, that we can almost expect
the Soviet Union to crack up any day?
Mr. FULBRIGHT. In his testimony
before the Committee on Foreign
Relations 2 years ago, that was clearly the
implication to be drawn from his
testimony. I shall refer to that in the next
paragraph of my prepared statement.
Mr. LONG. My impression of the
Secretary's statement at that time was
to the effect that the fact the Soviet
Union had lasted that long was a cause
for wonder.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I think the
Senator's statement is well taken.
It is worth remembering that the
doctrinal line here was laid down by the
administration less than 2 years ago.
Shortly after the 20th Soviet Congress,
that is, we were told by Secretary Dulles
that the Russian system was a failure;
that they were reexamining their creed
from A to Z; that the Soviet Union was
making no progress in penetrating the
Middle East; and that all in all, their
policies had miscarried. Since this was
said, any fact, however, random, has
been seized by administration sources
and woven into the design if it can be
made to fit the doctrinal theory of Soviet
weakness.
Thus we are told that so much of the
Soviet effort has gone into heavy industry
and so little into consumer goods that
its economy is out of balance; that its
people are dissatisfied and will become
disaffected. After all, they have only
100,000 automobiles a year, compared
to our 6 million. It is suggested, furthermore,
that Russian intellectuals cannot
be regimented and controlled forever;
that their demands for freedom may
cause the government to turn its
attention to some solution of Russia's internal
troubles, thereby halting the push
toward external aggression and subversion.
Additionally, it is suggested that the
proof of internal political tension and
instability is to be found in the dismissal
of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and
Zhukov. Each of these men represent
sources of power that Khrushchev has
alienated—so the argument goes—with
the result that they are now merely
biding their time for a disruptive counter
attack on his present rule.
It is neither pleasant nor popular to
contest this theorizing. The man who
does so, by pointing to the facts of Soviet
strength, risks every manner of false
charge. Inevitably, it will be said of him
that he has lost faith in America; that
he is an apologist for the Soviet way of
doing things; that he wants America to
make itself over along Soviet lines; or
that he means to panic America into a
preventive war designed to smash the
Soviet Union before its power increases
any further. Nevertheless, precisely
because I feel that the stuff of greatness
has not gone out of the bones of
Amer¬ica; precisely because I feel that our
democratic society is equal to the
emerg¬ency it faces, provided it knows what it
is dealing with, let me here try to sketch
the character of Soviet strength, and
the specific areas of weakness in the
American establishment, for the tests
ahead.
I would admit straight off that the
Soviet system may, in fact, have to be
altered. In the long run, it may even
collapse. But, as the saying goes, in the
long run too, all of us shall be dead.
Anyway, what counts most of all in the
life of nations, is the pace and timing of
events. And right now, when the world
all around us is being hammered into
new shapes, nothing on the line of
vision points to a collapse of the Soviet,
system. True, the Soviet ideology has
been, can be, and may be further
repudiated by events. But the Soviet power
system is something else again. Within,
and external to, Russia, that power system

Congressional Record
United States of America
PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE
85th CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION
Vol. 104
No. 11
WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 1958
Senate
OUR CURRENT CRISIS—AND THE
NEED FOR EDUCATION
Mr. FULBRIGHT obtained the floor.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, will
the Senator from Arkansas yield, so that
I may suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I shall be glad to
yield.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Then, Mr. President,
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The
clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call
the roll.
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, I
ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without
objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. Mr. President—
If we could first know where we are, and
whither we are tending, we could better judge
what to do and how to do it.
When Abraham Lincoln spoke those
words in his house-divided speech, a
century ago, the Nation was fast drifting
toward the abyss of a tragic and
disastrous war. Lincoln sensed that a policy
of Presidential firmness and candor
might foster a national self-awareness—
the indispensable preliminary to any
"saving act of Government. But,
President James Buchanan, a tired and
amiable man with tired policies, continued to
spread the contagion of his own
confusion over the land.
Today, what was true in 1858 is again
true, but on a vastly larger scale, and in
a vastly more menacing form.
The then issue of slavery has changed
into the global conflict of cold war: A war
in which military strength, or weakness,
is a consequence rather than a cause of
how things stand on the economic,
political, educational, and cultural sectors of
the battlefront. Meanwhile, one
unnerving similarity to the America of a
century ago remains in being: It is that
the peril of the Nation increases daily
because of the way the incumbent
administration has dulled, and continues to dull,
the Nation's awareness of the danger it
faces—the danger that is posed by two
leading questions:
How strong is the Soviet Union today?
How strong is it likely to be tomorrow?
When Sputniks I and II rang out with
alarming answers to these two questions,
the national will of America was poised
to rally around the Presidency. Indeed,
that is the traditional American reaction
to a national emergency—as can be
recalled from personal experience when
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and
when the Communists attacked Korea.
In 1941, and again in 1950, the American
people expected the President of the hour
to proclaim the formidable truths of
what the Nation faced, however unpleasant.
He was expected to frame, to win
approval for, and to execute the
measures for overcoming the emergency.
And Presidents Roosevelt and Truman,
each in his own way, did just that.
No less was expected of the Eisenhower
administration—if the emergency
implications in Russia's scientific
achievements were to be met and mastered.
Yet months dropped-away, and what we
received instead was the same bland diet
of sugar-coated half-truths that has
made us fat and immobile in the past 5 years; 5
years when we should have been
muscular, resilient, and ever on the move
scouting the terrain ahead.
In the passing months, if there was
any informed public discussion on the
highest matters of state since the first
earth satellite was launched, no thanks
were due to administration sources.
They were due, rather, to the aroused
energy of individual Members of the
Congress or of private persons. The highest
officials of the administration, for their
part, continued in their old ways.
They made their own inner councils
the judge, the jury, and the repository of
the records of their own actions, never
taking the people into their full
confidence. If they asked for support for
this or that measure, they withheld a
disclosure of the facts material to an
informed public discussion of the merits
of the proposal, or they so distorted the
meaning of the facts as to make them a
caricature of the realities they are meant
to stand for.
As an example of this, the Gaither
report, developed for the express purpose of
evaluating our strength relative to that
of the Soviet Union, was suppressed on
the ground that its unpleasant truths
might cause the people to panic. But in
the next breath, Mr. Hagerty, the
President's press secretary assured the Nation
that the report does not say that the
United States is weak now. If so, we
are left to conclude that the report was
not released because the Nation might
panic from joy over the evidence of our
strength. What a fantastic, dreamlike
performance it has been.
Nor has the case changed very much
for the better since the President's state
of the Union message was delivered.
The message, to begin with, is merely
a printed catalog of good intentions.
It is not the specifics of any action
program. The experiences of the past 5
years should teach us by now that we
would be well advised to withhold any
hosannas about a proposed program
until we see it in concrete form, and until
we see whether the administration is
willing to go the limit in fighting for
its adoption. For the evidence of the
past is that this administration has a
chronic habit of not following through.
Anyway, from what administration
sources have already put out about the
details of their space-age program, it
is, at bottom, a program calling for a
minimal instead of a maximum effort
on the part of the United States. For the
ruling principle to which it is tailored—
as administration sources have made
clear in conferences with congressional
leaders—is this: That the Soviet
Union—our challenger—is a warped
society, wracked by internal strains, and
fated for an early and inglorious
collapse. In the circumstances, all we have
to do is the very little that is required
to keep our own motors idling until the
inevitable crackup occurs to the Soviet
Union.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the
Senator yield?
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I yield to the
Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. LONG. As a matter of fact, is it
not true that from time to time some
of us have been advised by administration
sources, particularly by the Secretary
of State, that we can almost expect
the Soviet Union to crack up any day?
Mr. FULBRIGHT. In his testimony
before the Committee on Foreign
Relations 2 years ago, that was clearly the
implication to be drawn from his
testimony. I shall refer to that in the next
paragraph of my prepared statement.
Mr. LONG. My impression of the
Secretary's statement at that time was
to the effect that the fact the Soviet
Union had lasted that long was a cause
for wonder.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. I think the
Senator's statement is well taken.
It is worth remembering that the
doctrinal line here was laid down by the
administration less than 2 years ago.
Shortly after the 20th Soviet Congress,
that is, we were told by Secretary Dulles
that the Russian system was a failure;
that they were reexamining their creed
from A to Z; that the Soviet Union was
making no progress in penetrating the
Middle East; and that all in all, their
policies had miscarried. Since this was
said, any fact, however, random, has
been seized by administration sources
and woven into the design if it can be
made to fit the doctrinal theory of Soviet
weakness.
Thus we are told that so much of the
Soviet effort has gone into heavy industry
and so little into consumer goods that
its economy is out of balance; that its
people are dissatisfied and will become
disaffected. After all, they have only
100,000 automobiles a year, compared
to our 6 million. It is suggested, furthermore,
that Russian intellectuals cannot
be regimented and controlled forever;
that their demands for freedom may
cause the government to turn its
attention to some solution of Russia's internal
troubles, thereby halting the push
toward external aggression and subversion.
Additionally, it is suggested that the
proof of internal political tension and
instability is to be found in the dismissal
of Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, and
Zhukov. Each of these men represent
sources of power that Khrushchev has
alienated—so the argument goes—with
the result that they are now merely
biding their time for a disruptive counter
attack on his present rule.
It is neither pleasant nor popular to
contest this theorizing. The man who
does so, by pointing to the facts of Soviet
strength, risks every manner of false
charge. Inevitably, it will be said of him
that he has lost faith in America; that
he is an apologist for the Soviet way of
doing things; that he wants America to
make itself over along Soviet lines; or
that he means to panic America into a
preventive war designed to smash the
Soviet Union before its power increases
any further. Nevertheless, precisely
because I feel that the stuff of greatness
has not gone out of the bones of
Amer¬ica; precisely because I feel that our
democratic society is equal to the
emerg¬ency it faces, provided it knows what it
is dealing with, let me here try to sketch
the character of Soviet strength, and
the specific areas of weakness in the
American establishment, for the tests
ahead.
I would admit straight off that the
Soviet system may, in fact, have to be
altered. In the long run, it may even
collapse. But, as the saying goes, in the
long run too, all of us shall be dead.
Anyway, what counts most of all in the
life of nations, is the pace and timing of
events. And right now, when the world
all around us is being hammered into
new shapes, nothing on the line of
vision points to a collapse of the Soviet,
system. True, the Soviet ideology has
been, can be, and may be further
repudiated by events. But the Soviet power
system is something else again. Within,
and external to, Russia, that power system